You know, I was very much afraid to join this site in my first days of seeing it. I was thinking that all Linux users were living with the "Brave GNU World" mentality and all wore shirts with the GPL emblazoned on the back.

I'm both very happy and mildly saddened that that is not the case.

It's nice to see that there is still cause for debate even amongst a crowd of people that all use an OS that revolves around a kernel that's licensed under the GPL. If everyone in the (GNU/)Linux user community thought the same way, this site would be no fun at all.

I have to say, I really respect Randux's statement that the GPL is not a "Free" license, but rather an "Open-Source Enforceable" one. That's a very nice term that removes the positive propaganda of calling it "Free" and the negative counterpart calling it "Viral." It's a nice, neutral term. Regardless of my respect for that, I still refer to the GPL by my own definition: A "Freedom Insurance" License. But that's just me.

Going back to the original point of this post, about Slackware being free, I'm ashamed to say that I've never really had a chance to run Slackware. However, I know that most Linux distros are not "Free" by the terms invoked by the FSF, and many of them are "Free" by the terms of their own distributors (and nearly all of them are "Free" by the terms invoked by our wallets). I have to say I am very pleased with the development at the FSF's free software directory for a "Blob Free" Linux Kernel (http://directory.fsf.org/project/linux/).

You know, I can't help but think that if Linux was never released under the GPL, it never would've made it anywhere. It's too bad most sites end up blocking debates regarding free software. This post was such a great read, I couldn't help responding.

On a personal note, I may actually switch to either gNewSense or even GNU/Hurd in the future, since I'm that much in favor of the GNU GPL. The one thing that made me adopt GNU/Linux was reading Stallman's "Free Software, Free Society."

Sorry for the long post!

I don't understand how you could draw such a conclusion based on the fact that *BSD has been around longer than Linux and runs on the majority of webservers. It wasn't released under the GPL. It uses the BSD license.

Linux isn't good because it's licensed under the GPL (and check me on this but I'm pretty sure it significantly predates the GPL). It's good because it's a well thought out system that people can use.

Make no mistake, there are many factors which dictate the success or failure of any software component or system including marketing, licenses, complexity, usability, performance, reliability, etc. and the list goes on. Very few times in history has bad licensing killed good products (about the only thing I can think of like this is BetaMax video tape.)

And so do I. Somewhat like Debian GNU/Hurd.

But what can be done at thie moment --- is removing non-free sw from a distro
currently running by a person.

It's not a conclusion so much as it is a working generalization that I'm trying to become better educated about. After 1 year of off and on study, that's the question I'm trying to answer for myself now. I don't like being biased... I just am. I can't help it, but I am trying to do something about it. Once again, that's part of the reasons I joined LQ.

Just a bit of quick research: according to Wikipedia, the first GPL license was written by RMS in 1989, and the Linux kernel was started in 1991. I'm not saying this had any bearing on Torvalds's decision to license the kernel as such, of course.

Really? Do you have any link with numbers to back that up?

haha, majority of web servers run BSD? try more like 1-2%.